An independent blog looking at things from a classically liberal perspective. We are independent of any group or organization, and only speak for ourselves, and intend to keep it that way.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Save the planet and keep America white at the same time!

One of the major reasons that some people are so anti-immigration is that they don’t want poor people from the rest of the world moving here “stealing our jobs” while “living off our welfare.” And certainly, one of the prime motivations for immigration has been to improve one’s economic conditions. In fact, people immigrate to make their lives better.

In some cases that may mean seeking out more freedom. In some cases it means avoiding armed conflict. But I think it fair to say that most people today immigrate to the U.S. because they are seeking to improve their material existence. They are poor and they don’t want to be.

Now the anti-immigration Center for Immigration Studies, founded by anti-immigration activists, has remarketed their views. They don’t like immigrants. And their founder and main funder, John Tanton, has basically argued that they should use any argument, and any tactic, to stop immigration.

Basically Tanton wants to use every big government measure possible to keep out those damn poor people. He wants to “get the IRS on our side”. He says that CIS should actively recruit government employees who deal with immigration as members so that they can see the light and start denying legal immigration to the country. And he especially advocates that CIS do everything possible to prevent any immigration reform until they can get their policies imposed instead.

In one memo Tanton sent out he said: “The demographic picture in South Africa now is startlingly similar to what we’ll see in California in 2030” where “a White minority owns the property, has the best jobs and education, has the political power and speaks one language. A non-White majority has poor education, jobs and income, owns little property, is on its way to political power and speaks a different language.”

By the way Tanton apparently knows nothing about South Africa. The “White minority” never spoke one language, as he claims. About 60% spoke Afrikaans while 40% were primarily English speaking. Tanton sneers at South Africa being bilingual but said that was because “Blacks are taught in Zulu and related tongues.” He seems unaware that white South Africans were bilingual and that a huge percentage of black South Africans spoke Afrikaans or English in addition to their own language. The country was never bilingual but multi-lingual and has 11 official languages -- a nightmare for the White supremacist types.

Later he said that whites in California will own farms “but will not be able to speak to the Hispanic field workers. They will need bilingual foreman. Does this sound like social peace? Or like South Africa?” Again, the man is uneducated about South Africa. Most black farm workers in South Africa spoke Afrikaans as most farmers were Afrikaners. And many farm owners spoke one or more of the indigenous languages. Often these farms were small holdings with just a few employees -- they didn’t have a foreman standing between the farmer and his employees. Larger farms would have such foremen due to size, not due to language issues. Tanton clearly is willing to clutch at any straw.

Tanton’s obsession with race and immigration actually began because he was in a panic about the environment. The Southern Poverty Law Center says he “started out as a passionate environmentalist. In the 1960s and early 1970s, he was a leader in the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, and other mainstream environmental groups.” That was step one toward his obsession with race.

Tanton soon became fixated on population control, seeing environmental degradation as the inevitable result of overpopulation.

When the indigenous birth rate fell below replacement level in the United States, his preoccupation turned to immigration. And this soon led him to race.

Tanton had something akin to a conversion when he came across The Camp of the Saints, a lurid, racist novel written by Frenchman Jean Raspail that depicts an invasion of the white, Western world by a fleet of starving, dark-skinned refugees.Tanton helped get the novel published in English and soon was promoting what he considered the book's prophetic argument.

"Their [Third World] 'huddled masses' cast longing eyes on the apparent riches of the industrial west," Tanton wrote in 1975. "The developed countries lie directly in the path of a great storm."

And so he began to develop a counter-force. After 1979, when he co-founded FAIR, Tanton launched "a whole array of organizations that serve the overall ideological and political battle plan to halt immigration — even if those groups have somewhat differing politics," explained Rick Swartz, the pro-immigration activist who founded the National Immigration Forum in 1982.

So Tanton’s CIS has come full circle. They are now latching onto the global warming issue to justify their anti-immigration stands. Whether some well-intentioned advocates of the anthropogenic global warming theory wish it to be, the reality is that global warming is being used in the same way that “terrorism” is being used: as a catch-all excuse for a massive increase in state control of individuals.

CIS wants a massive increase in state control of individuals. In fact, they want total state control of all people wishing to immigrate to the U.S. and want that stopped. So, of course, they found their new mantra: immigration causes global warming.

Their newest report claims that “Immigration to the United States significantly increased world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country. On average immigrants increase their emissions four-fold by coming to America.” All this “may trigger far-reaching, long-term effects on the Earth’s climate and biosphere, and consequently, on human civilization.” Yep, that’s it, immigration may end human civilization.

One thing this report does do, which was not intended, is show the connection between our so-called “carbon footprint” and economic prosperity. Where CIS previously had focused on the impact of letting those non-white, poor folks into America they are now talking about their small carbon footprint being enlarged by immigration. What they mean is that poor people are better able to feed their families, have better homes, etc.

While the concern of CIS is mainly to rile up resentment and hatred for immigrants they are doing us a service. They are unintentionally showing that one of the most effective ways to reduce “carbon footprints” is to plunge nations into poverty.

Tanton started out as a fearful environmentalist who saw humans as the problem. That pushed him toward wanting to limit populations. And that pushed him toward wanting to restrict immigration. Once he was in anti-immigration activism he, and his outfits, found themselves allied with racists, white supremacists and other such outfits. And now they are using their environmentalism to try and sell their anti-immigration agenda to those terrified by global warming.

Note: Some years ago I read the “lurid, racist novel” The Camp of the Saints. It was at a time when I was researching population issues heavily. And it was apparent that the whole thesis of the book was based on the false assumptions regarding demographics that was the foundation of the fear-mongering of such people as Paul Erhlich and other’s in the population control movement. The fallacies built into that book were numerous and the racism it espoused was the result. Also note that when I refer to the population control movement I am not speaking about voluntary population control but those who advocate various forms of state intervention to control populations.